the genuine and
really valuable social student of the near future. As one recent
writer has feelingly put it: "We have had essays enough."

Eugenic practice for the immediate future is the third part of our
program. Must we wait until more data are collected, more facts
uncovered, before we undertake any definite proposals for eugenic
procedure? Although this is the most difficult aspect of the subject,
largely through lack of a sufficiently broad fact-basis, yet we are
certainly in possession of enough information to make plain a few
necessary steps. Most of the concrete proposals directed toward the
reduction of the undesirables and the increase of the desirables have
been visionary, impractical, or too limited in their view-point.
Above all, they have been open to the objection that they have gone
too far in the direction of that zone which separates the two classes.
It should be said again that most of these proposals have been those
of the amateur enthusiast, not of the seriously scientific Eugenist;
they have grown out of that common habit of "getting far from the
facts and philosophizing about them."

As Pearson points out, we must start from three fundamental biological
ideas. First, "That the relative weight of nature and nurture must not
_a priori_ be assumed but must be scientifically measured; and thus
far our experience is that nature dominates nurture, and that
inheritance is more vital than environment." Second, "That there
exists no demonstrable inheritance of acquired characters. Environment
modifies the bodily characters of the existing generation, but does
not [often] modify the germ plasms from which the next generation
springs. At most, environment can provide a selection of which germ
plasms among the many provided shall be potential and which shall
remain latent." Third, "That all human qualities are inherited in a
marked and probably equal degree." "If these ideas represent the
substantial truth, you will see how the whole function of the eugenist
is theoretically simplified. He cannot hope by nurture and by
education to create new germinal types. He can only hope by selective
environment to obtain the types most conducive to racial welfare and
to national progress. If we see this point clearly and grasp it to the
full, what a flood of light it sheds on half the schemes for the
amelioration of the people.... The widely prevalent notion that
bettered environment and improved education mean a _p